Organizations need a talented pool of developers to adopt digital transformation

The global tech industry is thriving across the world and transforming rapidly in the digital era. Multiple industries and organizations are in need of good tech developers to help in the development of digitalization. Cutting-edge technologies are providing a plethora of opportunities to developers with amazing talents.

In an exclusive interview with Analytics Insight, Andy Peddar, CEO of Deazy, explains how organizations are demanding intelligent and effective teams of developers to boost productivity and how Deazy is meeting client satisfaction with the pool of essential skills.

Brief us about the company, its specialization and the services that your company offers.

Deazy is a curated marketplace of development talent, a platform to intelligently connect enterprises and agencies with the right development talent for every engagement, in a cost-effective, scalable and flexible way. It's an ecosystem of developers with 50 handpicked tech teams comprising more than 2,500 developers.

The main problems that businesses face regarding tech development are capacity and capability. One Deazy client was struggling with both and the team ended up fulfilling their ongoing needs through more than six of the tech teams. According to a non-client, this would have meant at least six suppliers with the associated search, due diligence, contractual negotiations, and on-boarding for each, and managing six different engagements for the client – far too costly and time-consuming. Deazy provides limitless capacity and has teams that are already onboarded and ready to go, covering a vast range of technologies. It offers complete flexibility in terms of engagement models and commitment, and teams can start a project within weeks.

With high-quality development more important than ever, Deazy aims to make development easy.

What are some of the challenges faced by your company/industry today?

Andy Peddar, CEO of Deazy mentioned that there are two principal challenges— capacity and capability. There's a major shortage of developers, and there's not a day that goes by that one does not hear about someone who's got problems with hiring or retention in their development team. Six-figure salaries are the norm, and yet organizations still can't keep people. There are not enough people to go around essentially.
In terms of capability, it's hard for enterprises to be able to support an increasingly wide range of technologies and frameworks. That means trying to do so in-house requires a large inflexible team, and that's a model that doesn't work anymore. So, enterprises have significant gaps in their capability they need support with.

Where do you see growth coming in for the development sector?

Development has been on an upward curve for years now and people have been talking about digital transformation for the last ten years. As one moves towards a more digitally native society, the growth curve has become much steeper. Pretty much everything requires development now— every app, website and more– it's all underpinned by code. This 'digitize or die' movement has been accelerated, even further by the pandemic.

What's behind the current scarcity of good developers?

What the industry is seeing happen is a digital transformation taking place much faster than it would have done without the pandemic. Although people are being trained up, it's not happening fast enough. The shift has been at light speed, the market hasn't responded fast enough, and demand is outstripping supply, hence the need for Deazy.

What leadership skills will be most important in 2022?

There are many qualities leaders should aspire to in 2022. Learning from mistakes, adopting a growth mindset, providing a fast feedback loop– these are all important. But more than anything else, leaders need to show greater transparency. It's been such a turbulent few years, with so much uncertainty, that employees want to know why decisions have been made. Where someone works is important to them, beyond being a mere place of work. They want to know what the vision is and how their role fits into that. So, transparent communication is, perhaps, the essential skill for leaders this coming year.

People require a strong leadership throughout this uncertainty and turbulence, the main part of which is moving to a 'hybrid model' and making that work. What is the right balance of in-office and virtual, how does one support those who are based further away and are almost 100% virtual? 'Strong' leadership doesn't mean barking out orders, it means showing more intentionality— finding time for innovation and collaboration, finding time and the right forums for social interaction, providing feedback and creating space to listen.

What's the biggest mistake you have made in business and why?

I made two mistakes at a previous start-up that didn't succeed. The SalonBook was a hairdresser marketplace, and the team had a real challenge finding the right development partner. Appointing the wrong one was a mistake that led directly to starting Deazy as my next venture. But the other was a wider mistake. The company didn't properly validate the customer needs for idea. The team knew that the consumers would use the platform, but the hairdressers themselves proved suspicious of technology and not interested in such a solution. Given that the success of the whole marketplace depended on hairdressers using the platform, it was a pivotal error and one that I've never repeated.

Another mistake was around scaling the team. Founders tend to face two extremes when scaling the team. One is being too controlling and not handing things over that makes it impossible to scale. The other is handing over too quickly to the wrong people who, then, destroy any progress and prevent scaling.

My mistake was closer to the latter where I made some poor hiring decisions early on, handed things over too quickly, and ultimately it prevented me from scaling Deazy sooner. I had to get back into the detail, fix the problems, address the hiring mistakes head-on and then learn from them so I could build a great team that would enable us to scale.

What are your three tips for start-up business success?

First and foremost, one must make sure one has a problem worth solving. History is littered with entrepreneurs who have a good idea in theory, but in reality, find that there is no great demand for that idea. Founders must also stay laser-focused on the problem their business is addressing. Validate it with real users and potential customers, know there is a large enough addressable market and identify the users who will love it.

Secondly, keep costs lean at the start. One should not waste money on office space and other costs that do not directly help in the growth, especially now when there has been a shift in thinking about the need for physical premises.

Finally, one should ensure a good hiring and fast-firing if people aren't working out. This is critical as an early-stage start-up is in survival mode, and one cannot carry people in this period. People are needed to act like co-founders and really take responsibility.